"Your hands," Agnes said.
"Excuse me?"
"They're shaking."
Megan looked down. She was right. Her fingers could barely find the buttons.
"When he comes for me," Agnes said in a whisper, "my hands start to shake too."
Megan moved back to the bedside and held her mother-in-law again.
"You too, right, Megan?"
"Me too what?"
"You're scared. You're shaking because you're afraid of him too."
Megan didn't know how to reply.
"You're in danger, aren't you, Megan? Is he visiting you too?"
Megan started to say no, started to say something comforting about being fine, but she pulled up. She didn't want to lie to Agnes. Why should Agnes think she was the only one who ever got scared?
"I... I don't know," Megan said.
"But you're scared he's come back to get you?"
Megan swallowed, thinking about Stewart Green, about how it all ended. "I guess I am."
"You shouldn't be."
"I shouldn't?"
"No."
Megan tried to nod. "Okay. Tell you what. I won't be scared, if you won't be."
But Agnes frowned and waved the patronizing deal away. "It's different."
"How?"
"You're young," Agnes said. "You're strong. You're tough. You've known adversity, haven't you?"
"Like you."
Agnes ignored that. "You're not an old woman confined to a bed. You don't have to lie helplessly in the dark, shivering, waiting for him to get you."
Megan just looked at her, thinking, Wow, who's working--and who's receiving--the validation therapy now?
"Don't wait in the dark," Agnes said in an agitated whisper. "Don't ever feel helpless. Please? For me? I don't want that for you."
"Okay, Agnes."
"Promise?"
Megan nodded. "I promise."
And she meant it. Validation therapy or not, Agnes had spoken a universal truth: Feeling scared was bad, but feeling helpless was far worse. Megan had been toying with the idea of making a big move since Lorraine's visit anyway. It might unearth the past, bring it back in a bad way, but as Agnes had pointed out, it was better than lying helplessly in the dark.
"Thank you, Agnes."
The old woman's eyes blinked, as though fighting back tears. "Are you leaving?"
"Yes. But I'll be back."
Agnes spread her arms. "Can you stay close for a little while longer? Not long. I know you need to be on your way. But a few minutes won't make a big difference, will it?"
Megan shook her head. "It won't make any difference at all."
7
BROOME HAD JUST STARTED GOING through the surveillance videos, watching various idiots stumble out with drinks, beads, party hats, and girls, when Rudy from La Creme called him.
"Carlton Flynn had a favorite girl," Rudy said.
"Who?"
"Tawny Allure."
Broome rolled his eyes. "That her real name?"
"As real as anything else on her, if you get my drift," Rudy said.
"Yeah, you're the master of subtlety. When will she be in?"
"She's here now."
"On my way."
Broome was about to switch off the television when Goldberg, his superior and a dickwad of biblical proportions, said, "What the hell is this?"
Goldberg leaned over him. He reeked of beer, sweat, and tuna.
"Video feed of La Creme the night Flynn vanished."
"Why you checking that?"
Broome didn't really want to get into this, but Goldberg wouldn't just let it go. Goldberg wore a beige button-down dress shirt that'd probably started life off as bright white. He snarled when he spoke, figuring that bluster would hide the dim. So far, it had worked for him.
Broome rose. "I'm seeing if there is any connection between Stewart Green and Carlton Flynn. Both men vanished on the same date."
Goldberg nodded as though in deep thought. "So where you off to now?"
"Back to La Creme. Flynn liked one stripper in particular."
"Hmm." Goldberg rubbed his chin. "Kinda like Stewart Green?"
"Maybe."
Broome ejected the flash drive from the computer. Maybe he'd have Erin look into them. She had a good eye for that kind of thing. He could drop them off on his way. He hurried past Goldberg. As he turned the corner, he looked back, worried Goldberg would still be on his tail. He wasn't. Goldberg was hunched over the phone, cupping the mouthpiece like that did some good.
Twenty minutes later, after quickly dropping off the flash drive at Erin's, Broome sat across from Tawny Allure in La Creme's quietest booth. Rudy stood behind her, arms crossed. Tawny was all attitude and implants and daddy-didn't-love-me-enough self-esteem issues. That was the cliche in a place like this, and truth was, most of the time the cliche applied. Tawny was young and brick-house built in a surgically enhanced way, but she had the kind of harsh face that had already seen too many guys sneaking out at daylight and then changing their cell phone numbers.
"Tell me about Carlton Flynn," Broome asked.
"Carlton?" She blinked with eyelashes so fake they looked like dying crabs baking in the sun. "Oh, he was a sweetheart. Treated me like gold. Always a gentleman."
Tawny wasn't a very good liar. Her eyes darted about like scared birds.
"Anything else you can tell me about him?"
"Not really."
"How did you meet?"
"Here."
"How?"
"He bought a lap dance," Tawny explained. "They're legal, you know."
"And then, what, he took you back to his place?"
"Oh no. We don't do that here. This place is totally legit. I'd never."
Even Rudy rolled his eyes at that one.
Broome sighed. "Tawny?"
"Yes?"
"I'm not vice, so I don't care if you bang monkeys for doughnuts--"
"Huh?"
"And I also don't think you had anything to do with what happened to Carlton. But if you keep lying to me--"
"I'm not lying!"
Broome held up a hand for her to shut up. "If you keep lying to me, Tawny, I'll nail you for it and put you in jail, just for kicks. I will frame you and make it look like you murdered him because, really, I'm bored with this case and need to clear it. So you can tell me the truth, or you can end up serving time."
It was, of course, an idle threat. Broome almost felt bad about it, what with this girl who was too dumb to get out of her own way. She glanced behind her at Rudy. Broome wondered whether he should tell Rudy to take a hike, but Rudy nodded for her to go ahead.
Tawny looked down. Her shoulders slumped. "He broke my finger."
She had been keeping her right hand under the table. There was a red glove covering it--the color matched her bra top--and when she took it off, Broome could see that it hadn't been set right. The digit was pointing to the side, the bone still nearly poking through the skin.
Broome shot a glare toward Rudy. Rudy shrugged. "What, you think we got a good medical plan here?"
A tear ran down Tawny's cheek. "Carlton is mean. He likes to hurt me. He said if I told anybody or complained he'd kill Ralphie."
"Is that your boyfriend?"
She looked at Broome as though he had two heads. "My poodle."
Broome looked at Rudy. "You know about this?"
"What, you think I keep track of the girls' pets?"
"Not the dog, dumb ass. Carlton Flynn being a sadistic prick."
"Hey, if anybody hurts my girls, I tell them to take a hike. But if I don't know about it, what am I supposed to do, am I right? It's like that tree falling in the woods or whatever. Does it make a dent if you don't hear it? If I don't know about it, I don't know about it."
Rudy, the gentlemen's lounge philosopher.
"Did he hurt you other ways?" Broome asked.
Tawny nodded, eyes squeezed shut.
"Can you tell me about it?"
"
No."
"So you hated him."
"Yeah."
"And now he's missing."
Tawny's fake lashes flew open. "You said you didn't think I had anything to do with that."
"Maybe not you," Broome said. "Maybe someone who cares about you. Maybe someone who wanted to protect you."
Again she gave him the confused look.
"A boyfriend, a parent, a close friend."
"You're kidding, right?"
Sadly her confusion was justified. She had no one, other than a poodle named Ralphie. Dead end.
"When did you last see Flynn?" Broome asked.
"Night before he, uh, left or whatever."
"Where did you two go?"
"Here first. He liked to watch me dance. He'd buy random guys lap dances and he'd smile and watch and then he'd take me home and call me a slut for dancing with them and hurt me bad."
Broome tried not to show anything. You want to come here, get your rocks off, whatever, he didn't judge. But the thing they never tell people is, it's never enough. So Carlton Flynn started off as some two-bit player, getting some ass, but after a while, you crave more. That's how it always works. Everything is a gateway drug to the next. Broome's grandfather said it best: "If you were getting pussy all the time, you'd want a second dick."
"Did you make plans to see him again?" Broome asked.
"He was supposed to meet me the night he, you know, disappeared."
"What happened?"
"He called and said he'd be late. But he never showed."
"Did he say why he'd be late?"
"No."
"Do you know where he went earlier that day?"
Tawny shook her head. The stale stench of hairspray and regret wafted toward him.
"Anything you can tell me about that day?"
More head shaking.
"I don't get it," Broome said. "This guy kept hurting you, right?"
"Yeah."
"It was escalating."
"Huh?"
Broome bit back the sigh. "Getting worse and worse."
"Oh. Right. Yeah."
Broome spread his hands. "How did you think it'd all end?"
Tawny blinked, looked away, considered the question for a moment. "The same way it always does. He'd get tired of me. Move on to the next thing." She added a shrug. "Either that or he'd kill me."
8
THE WORDS "LAW OFFICE OF Harry Sutton" were stenciled into the pebbled glass. Old-school.
When Megan gently rapped on the pebbled glass, Harry answered with a resounding "Enter!"
She reached for the knob. A few hours ago, she'd called home and told Dave that she wouldn't be home till late. He wanted to know why. She told him not to worry and hung up. Now here she was, back in Atlantic City, in a place she had known all too well.
Megan opened the door, knowing that doing so would probably change everything. The office was still a seedy one-room operation--small-time with a lowercase s--but Harry would have it no other way.
"Hey, Harry."
Harry was not an attractive man. His eyes had enough bags under them to take a three-week cruise. His nose was caricature bulbous. His hair was a shock of white that wouldn't come down without the threat of gunfire. But his smile, well, it was beatific. The smile warmed her--brought her back and made her feel safe.
"It's been too long, Cassie."
Some called Harry a street lawyer, but that wasn't really what Harry was. Four decades ago he had graduated Stanford Law School and started on a partnership track at the prestigious law firm of Kronberg, Reiter and Roseman. One night, some well-meaning colleagues dragged the quiet, shy attorney down to Atlantic City for gambling, girls, and general debauchery. The shy Harry dived in--and never left. He quit the big firm, stenciled his name upon this very office door, and decided to champion the city's underdogs, who, in many ways, consisted of everyone who started out here.
Very few people you meet have a halo over their head. They aren't beautiful or angelic or working for charities--in Harry's case, he definitely preferred the sinners to the saints--but there was just an aura of trust and goodness about them. Harry was one of those people.
"Hello, Cassie," Harry said.
His voice was stiff. He shifted in his chair.
"How've you been, Harry?"
His clear blue eyes looked at her in a funny way. This wasn't like him, but it had been nearly two decades. People change. She started to wonder if coming here had been a mistake.
"Fine, thank you."
"Fine, thank you?"
Harry nodded, biting down on his lip.
"What's going on, Harry?"
His eyes suddenly brimmed with tears.
"Harry?"
"Damn," he said.
"What?"
"I promised I'd keep it together. I'm such a wuss sometimes."
She said nothing, waited.
"It's just that... I thought you were dead."
She smiled, feeling relief that, yes, he was the same overly emotional guy she remembered. "Harry..."
He waved it away. "The cops came here after you vanished with that guy."
"I didn't vanish with that guy."
"You just vanished on your own?"
"Sort of."
"Well, the cops wanted to talk to you. They still do."
"I know," Megan said. "That's why I'm back. I need your help."
WHEN TAWNY ALLURE FIRST SAW the smiling young couple standing near her doorway, she sighed and shook her head.
Tawny's real name was Alice. She had used it at first, going by the stage moniker "Alice in Wonderland," but her given name made it easier for those from her past to recognize her. Right now, with work behind her, she wore a loose, can't-tell-implants sweatshirt. She'd traded in her stiletto heels for low-top tennis shoes. She had scrubbed off the spackle-thick makeup and thrown on a pair of celebrity-in-hiding-size sunglasses. She did not, she thought, look anything like the exotic dancer she was.
The smiling couple looked as though they'd just wandered away from a Bible study. Tawny frowned. She knew the type. Do-gooders. They wanted to give her pamphlets and save her. They would have some corny catchphrase like "lose the G-string and find Jesus," and she would respond, "Does Jesus tip well?"
The smiling blond girl was young and pretty in a wholesome way. Her hair was tied back in a cheerleader-bouncing ponytail. She wore a turtleneck and a skirt that would normally work at the club for a school-girl fantasy number, complete with bobby socks. Who wore that in real life?
The cute guy with her had the wavy hair of a politician on a sailboat. He sported khakis, a blue button-down, and had a sweater tied around his neck.
Tawny was not in the mood. Her finger throbbed and ached. She felt weak, beaten, defeated. She wanted to get inside and feed Ralphie. Her mind was still on that cop Broome's visit and, of course, the missing Carlton Flynn. The first time she met Carlton he wore a tight black T-shirt that read "I'm Not a Gynecologist, But I'll Take a Look." Talk about a big-time "Keep Away" sign. But stupid Tawny had giggled when she read it. Sad when she thought about it now. Tawny had some decent attributes, but her asshole-dar was always off when it came to men.
Sometimes--most times--Tawny felt as if bad luck walked two steps behind her, catching up every once in a while, tapping her on the shoulder, reminding her that he was there, her constant companion.
It hadn't started that way. She had loved her job at La Creme in the beginning. It had been fun and exciting and a dance party every night. And, no, Tawny hadn't been sexually abused as a child or any of that, thank you very much, but she did have another quality you often found in people who go into her line of work.
Tawny was, she could admit to herself, inherently lazy and easily bored.
People always talk about how the girls are damaged or lacked self-esteem, and, yeah, that was true, but the big thing was, most girls simply didn't want to hold a real job. Who does? Think about it--what were the alternatives to what she was now doin
g?
Take Tawny's sister, Beth. Since graduating high school six years ago, Beth worked data entry for the First Trenton Insurance. She sat in a smelly, airless cubicle in front of a computer screen and plugged in God-knows-what data--hour after hour, day after day, year after year, stuck in a cubicle smaller than a jail cell, until, well, what?
Shudder.
Seriously, Tawny thought, Kill me now.